Digital IVUS Catheter Cleared in Japan

March 7, 2011 – A new digital intra-vascular ultrasound (IVUS) catheter has been cleared in Japan. The Eagle Eye Platinum digital IVUS catheter, from Volcano, was introduced at the Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) Live Demonstration Course in Kurashiki.

The catheter offers all of the benefits of the predecessor Eagle Eye Gold catheter, plus improved deliverability and the convenience of additional radiopaque markers. Full market release in Japan is expected in the second quarter of 2011.

"Volcano is thrilled to offer our most advanced digital IVUS catheter to the largest – and most developed – IVUS market in the world," said David Sheehan, president of the IVUS and FM business units at Volcano Corporation. "Since the catheter's release in the U.S. and Europe, customers have been impressed with its deliverability through tortuous anatomy and complex lesions, and have appreciated the ability to more accurately perform angiographic lesion length assessments by using the integrated radiopaque markers instead of taking the time to use a separate pullback device."

"In Japan, physicians are tackling increasingly complex and challenging PCI," said Junichi Osawa, president and managing director of Volcano Japan. "The more tapered tip design of the Eagle Eye Platinum catheter, with lower entry profile and new GlyDx hydrophilic coating, facilitates guidance of chronic total occlusion (CTO) procedures, and the smoother lower profile catheter transitions improve delivery through smaller guides. This can help facilitate radial access, an approach common in Japan and growing elsewhere in the world due to reduced bleeding complications."

A comparison of how the Abbott Absorb BVS appears with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) on the left, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) of the right. The stent is difficult to visualize and sizing is critical, so both modalities can help in bioresorbable stent measurements and to confirm stent apposition. Left image from the Volcano IVUS system and the right image from St. Jude Medical's OCT system.

The dual catheter OCT-IVUS imaging device can be inserted into an artery to simultaneously capture an infrared image of the arterial wall (OCT, at left) and an ultrasound image (IVUS, right) that doctors use to determine the potential that a plaque is susceptible to rupture that could cause a heart attack or stroke.